A Conversation with Bashir Makhoul, "The Promise," Zawyeh Gallery, by James Scarborough
April 03, 2025
In "The Promise," Bashir Makhoul turns Zawyeh Gallery into a meditation on displacement through simple architectural forms. His work rebuilds houses as containers of memory. The recurring motif - a cube with door and window - creates a visual vocabulary both minimal and rich with meaning. The exhibition strikes a balance between aesthetic beauty and political urgency. His electroplated 3D prints give the dense house formations a crystalline quality, making them appear both fragile and resilient.
In the "Fractured Oblivion" series, his vision becomes most potent. Blossom petals—once symbols of unity in his earlier works—now orbit dark voids resembling bullet holes he photographed in 1990s Beirut. These works transcend abstract composition to evoke violence and exile. The "Skein" series extends this theme through tangled threads that mirror the complex patterns of displacement and return.
"My Olive Tree" stands as the exhibition's emotional anchor. Here, geometric structures take the spectral form of an ancient olive tree—Makhoul's personal symbol standing between lands he doesn't own. Like Palestinians themselves, the tree waits—testifying to promises both made and broken. Through this ambiguity, Makhoul's work transcends political commentary to explore belonging.
Below follows an email conversation with Bashir Makhoul
JS: Your exhibition The Promise centers on elemental house forms—cubes with doors and windows arranged in dense formations. What drew you to this architectural motif, and how has its meaning evolved throughout your artistic practice?
BM: You know, the idea of home has always been central for me—not just as a place, but as something layered. Safety, belonging, memory... and then, of course, for many of us, especially Palestinians, it’s also about loss. It’s about something taken. When you lose your home, you’re not just losing a structure. You’re losing a connection to your identity, to your past.
So, the house, reduced to a cube with a door and a window—that form became a way to hold all of that complexity. It’s minimal, yes, but loaded. I first started using it in a large installation in Beijing called Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost. It was a kind of cardboard city, mixed with lenticular images from Palestinian refugee camps. And from there, the house kept reappearing in my work—sometimes dense, chaotic, sometimes more ordered.
I’m drawn to contradictions, and this motif lets me play with that—order and chaos, memory and absence. Over time, it’s become less about architecture and more about identity under pressure. The home as a fragile structure, yes, but also as a symbol of persistence.
JS: The press materials mention that you photographed bullet holes in Beirut during the 1990s, which have inspired elements of your Fractured Oblivion series. Could you share the specific circumstances of these photographs and how they've transformed from documentation into artistic expression?
BM: Yeah, that trip to Beirut—it was a big moment for me. I was finally able to visit my grandmother there after getting my British passport. She’d been a refugee since 1948. And I remember being really struck by the walls of the city—literally covered in bullet holes, still scarred from the war. So, I started photographing them. I think I took close to a thousand images.
That material became part of an earlier work called Points of View, where I used the bullet holes to create a kind of wallpaper—turning violence into interior surface, into pattern. But it didn’t stop there. These images stayed with me. They became part of how I think.
In Fractured Oblivion, I brought those same holes back—this time into paintings that looked, at first, quite delicate. Blossom petals floating, a kind of quietness. But then—these voids. Like ruptures. The violence interrupts the beauty.
And this is something I return to a lot in my work—nothing is ever final. One piece feeds the next. I often start something, step away, and later see how it connects to something I’d done years before. It’s all part of the same thread. Or tangle, maybe. But a deliberate one.
JS: Your recent experiments with electroplated 3D printing have introduced crystalline structures to your house formations. What technical challenges did you encounter with this process, and how does this medium serve your conceptual aims differently than traditional methods?
BM: Honestly, I think of making as a kind of play. That’s how I approach it. I don’t mean in a casual sense—I mean play as a space to learn, to take risks. In this project, I designed a set of 4-5 house forms sizes—same structure, always a door and two windows—and then I just threw them, digitally, onto a virtual - You know, like throwing sand and seeing how it falls.
It reminded me of a photo I made in another work, Handful of My Sand, where I grabbed some sand, let it go, and captured that moment. Same material, but as soon as I let go, it changed. That’s what I wanted with these forms too. Once they landed, whatever stuck together—that became the shape. I barely interfered, except to adjust the height so it could be printed.
And yes, the polishing and electroplating—that’s the really labour-intensive part. But it’s worth it, because the final surface gives this jewel-like, crystalline effect. It looks precious, but you know it came from chaos. That contradiction is the whole point.
JS: The exhibition features work from several distinct but interconnected series—Fractured Oblivion, Deep Wounds, and Skein. How do you see these different bodies of work speaking to each other within the gallery space?
BM: That’s a good question because, in many ways, I don’t think of these series as separate in the usual sense. They’re more like different scenes in the same act, if we think of the exhibition as a kind of theatre. One doesn’t conclude, and then the next begins—they’re all part of the same unfolding.
So yes, you’ll see the same forms or symbols across them—houses, petals, voids, threads—but they’re always shifting. In Fractured Oblivion, petals are torn apart by bullet holes. In Deep Wounds, the sphere—a perfect form—is ruptured, punctured, made unstable. And then Skein pulls that further, with thread-like lines overlaying densely packed images of housing, almost suffocating the surface.
What ties it all together is contradiction—beauty and damage, structure and collapse. But also the idea of continuation. None of these works are trying to say, “this is it.” They’re just part of a process that doesn’t really end.
So the gallery becomes this stage, where ideas appear, disappear, overlap. It’s not always neat, but it’s honest. That’s how I like to work.
JS: In My Olive Tree, geometric structures take on the form of an ancient olive tree standing between two parcels of land you don't own. Could you elaborate on the personal significance of this particular tree and what it represents in your broader artistic vision?
BM: Yes, that tree is very real. It’s the only olive tree I still have in Palestine. And the strange thing is—it sits between two plots of land, neither of which I legally own. That pretty much captures the whole Palestinian condition, doesn’t it? Rooted, but not grounded. Belonging, but dispossessed.
I built the tree from small house forms, the same ones I use throughout my work. But here, they’re stacked and layered into something organic, something ancestral. It’s not just a sculpture—it’s a transformation. The architectural becomes the natural. And that’s important to me, that shift.
The olive tree itself is such a loaded symbol for Palestinians—endurance, resilience, deep time. And in this piece, it has a kind of ghostly presence. It’s delicate, reflective, but still standing. Like memory made visible.
JS: Your work often juxtaposes elegant color palettes with unsettling political realities. How do you approach this tension between aesthetic beauty and difficult subject matter in your creative process?
BM: I actually look for that tension. It’s not something I try to avoid—it’s the core of how I work. Beauty and violence, order and chaos, clarity and ambiguity—putting those opposites together is how I try to make something that sticks.
Visually, I’m drawn to colour, form, elegance. I can’t help that—it’s part of my aesthetic language. But at the same time, I’m dealing with difficult histories, loss, trauma. And I think when you bring those things into the same space, something new happens. A kind of grit, like I said earlier. The thing that makes the pearl.
I’m also very influenced by Islamic art. You see beauty there not as decoration, but as something deeply structured—repetition, rhythm, colour, intellect, and spirit, all working together. That’s stayed with me.
So, when people encounter my work, I want them to be drawn in—maybe even seduced—but then to realise there’s something deeper, more fractured, beneath the surface. That surprise, that shift in perception—that’s what I’m after.
JS: Edward Said's notion of origins as "an act of cutting open" seems to resonate with your Deep Wounds series. How has Said's thinking influenced your understanding of rupture and beginnings in your work?
BM: Edward Said has been with me from the beginning—his thinking, his writing. That idea from Beginnings, about origins being an act of rupture, of cutting open—it’s powerful. Because we often talk about beginnings as something pure, or whole. But what he’s saying is that they’re messy, disruptive, and open-ended.
That’s how I see my work. In Deep Wounds, you’ve got these perfect spheres—then suddenly they’re broken. Not just damaged but opened. The wound becomes the beginning, the entry point.
This also shaped the way Gordon Hon and I approached our book, The Origins of Palestinian Art. We weren’t interested in a clean timeline. We were thinking in terms of interruption, fragmentation, contradiction—because that’s the reality we’ve inherited. And that’s how I see identity too—not as a finished thing, but something constantly in the process of becoming.
JS: Throughout The Promise, you engage with themes of exile, return, and waiting. How do you see your work participating in broader conversations about Palestinian identity and displacement in contemporary art?
BM: Well, the title The Promise says a lot, doesn’t it? Especially for Palestinians. It refers to a promise made to others, one that cost us everything. There’s no way around that. So yes, exile, return, waiting—they’re always there in my work, even when it’s not explicit.
At the same time, I’m not interested in fixed definitions of identity. I don’t want to present Palestinian-ness as something static. For me, identity is something being formed—through memory, through loss, through contradiction. The work is part of that process. Not defining but opening it up.
So, in that sense, the exhibition becomes a space of anticipation—not passive waiting, but something alive. Waiting with potential. With history. With complexity. That’s how I hope the work speaks into the broader conversation—by refusing closure.
JS: The title The Promise suggests both possibility and uncertainty—something that can be both made and broken. What promises—personal, political, or artistic—were you reflecting on when conceiving this exhibition?
BM: For me, The Promise is personal, no question. It’s about trust—and how fragile that is. Especially as a Palestinian, the word “promise” carries a weight. Promises have been made to us and broken. Repeatedly.
So yes, when I chose the title, titles are very important for me, there are an extension to the work itself. I was thinking about that space between hope and betrayal. About how a promise is never neutral—it’s always a risk. It shapes your expectations, your future. And when it’s broken, it leaves a wound.
But maybe there’s still something in that space worth holding onto.
JS: This marks your first solo exhibition in Dubai. How do you hope your work might be received differently in this context compared to previous exhibitions elsewhere, and what new dialogues do you hope it might open?
BM: I’m really excited to be showing with Zawyeh Gallery in Dubai—it’s my first solo exhibition here, and it feels meaningful. Dubai isn’t just a city; it’s a kind of meeting point. People come through from everywhere. So, for a show like this, which deals with movement, memory, displacement—it feels like the right place.
My work has been shown all over the world, and it’s always read slightly differently. But the human element—the emotional weight of the images, the fragility of the forms—that tends to land in a similar way.
What’s different here is the context. Many people who will see this work will have their own stories of migration, dislocation, dual identity. So, I’m hoping there’s a kind of recognition—not just politically, but aesthetically and culturally too. A sense that the work echoes something personal, maybe even shared.
And also, I hope it opens up a conversation about home—not just as a nationalist idea, but as something personal, conceptual, emotional, constantly shifting.
The exhibition runs from Sunday, April 13 until Monday, June 30, 2025. Zawyeh Gallery is located at Unit 27, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai. For more information, click here.